Why did alt.politics.economics die?

[BeamMeUpScotty]

It's been days since I have seen any action on alt.politics.economics
and it was one of the most active groups I was reading.



--
When it comes to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, there is NO
moderation. To do so is to lose the battle before it has begun.

[Gary Forbis]

On Mar 13, 6:03 am, BeamMeUpScotty

<ThenDestroyEveryth...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote:
> It's been days since I have seen any action on alt.politics.economics
> and it was one of the most active groups I was reading.

It's one of the two groups I read any more. I used to read all of the
Usenet groups
in the '80s but with the expansion of student access the educators saw
a need for
the alt and talk domains. It soon became impossible to keep up. I
saw my focus
narrow to a few of the comp domain entries, alt.philosophy,
alt.politics.economics,
and talk.origins.

I didn't have time to keep up with even these so my attention in
alt.philosophy
began to drop. I tried keeping up but the articles got to be too
predictable and
the interesting ones took quite a bit of thinking.

talk.origins was mostly fluff. The religious folk weren't really open
to reason
so it dropped by the wayside.

alt.politics.economics has been under constant attack and as the
younger
people come and go they are leaving sooner because this group is also
quite rote with a lot of the opinions fact free or heavily spun. You
know
my politics so if I blame it on the right that would be in part due to
my bias.
Harry Hope would post stuff here but seldom respond. Dennis is his
right
wing counterpart. DP is just sick but his noise helps make this group
less interesting to a wider audience. Finally, the lack of civility
in the
disagreements makes this an unplessant place.

For several years now the participation by many of the major posters
rises and falls with the election seasons. These people aren't here
to
participate in a dialog but to drown it out. It's near complete now
so
the number of real participants is quite small. So small that
concurrant
vacations or otherwise directed attention can have a huge effect.
Also, google and other newsgroup providers tend to have "glitches"
at key moments in the election cycle. I'm not suggesting that's the
case right now. I think the options for the spammers are decreasing
so having to change their providers can also affect volume.

[Tim Howard]

On 3/13/2012 6:03 AM, BeamMeUpScotty wrote:
>
> It's been days since I have seen any action on alt.politics.economics
> and it was one of the most active groups I was reading.
>

Who says it did? I see over 1000 posts on it right now for the past month.